There have been disagreements about the linguistic, historical and social status of Scots. Focused broad Scots is at one end of a scale, with Scottish Standard English at the other.[7][8] Scots is generally regarded as one of the ancient varieties of English, yet it has its own distinct variations.[7]

The growth and distribution of Scots in Scotland and Ulster: Old English by the beginning of the 9th century in the northern portion of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, now part of ScotlandEarly Scots by the beginning of the 15th centuryModern Scots by the mid 20th century

From the thirteenth century Early Scots spread further into Scotland through the burghs established by King David I. The growth in prestige of Early Scots in the fourteenth century, and the decline of French in Scotland, made Scots the prestige dialect of most of eastern Scotland.[13] From 1610 to the 1690s during the Plantation of Ulster large numbers of Scots-speaking Lowlanders, some 200,000, settled there.[14] In the core areas of Scots settlement, Scots outnumbered English settlers by five or six to one.[15] Southern Modern English was adopted as the literary language after 1700, while "Modern Scots" is sometimes used to describe the spoken language after 1700.